April 19, 2024
Intro
Who doesn’t like saving money? With every project, there are always ways to reduce project expenses, but they might not always be obvious. Whenever you have the option, it’s a good idea to consider sheet metal fabrication for your parts.
In this guide, you’ll learn why. Our machining experts will explain 8 ways that sheet metal fabricators, like our team at Rapid Axis, can reduce your project’s expenses.
Intro
Who doesn’t like saving money? With every project, there are always ways to reduce project expenses, but they might not always be obvious. Whenever you have the option, it’s a good idea to consider sheet metal fabrication for your parts.
In this guide, you’ll learn why. Our machining experts will explain 8 ways that sheet metal fabricators, like our team at Rapid Axis, can reduce your project’s expenses.
1. Effective Material Usage
When we use a plasma cutter or waterjet cutter to cut out a sheet metal part, there’s a big opportunity to optimize how much material we use. With our plasma cutter, we can move the part around in software before cutting starts, to make sure we effectively use every square inch of our raw sheet metal sheets.
This translates to less waste in each project, and the ability to use sheets that were partially cut already. With lower stock material costs, your project has to pay less for every cut.
2. Streamlined Production Processes
In every project, time is money. With the right sheet metal fabricators in your corner, we can save you time and streamline the full production process. This is largely thanks to the speed and automation associated with sheet metal cutting machines.
Our streamlining means that you get parts delivered sooner, and you spend less money on the physical manufacturing.
3. Bulk Ordering
We love it when people make bulk orders with Rapid Axis — not only does it keep us busy for longer, but it allows us to further optimize the CNC cutting operation. Our plasma cutter can nest dozens of parts together tightly on a single sheet of paper.
That means that we hit the “go” button one time on our machine, and it makes tens of parts that are ready to be cleaned up and sent to you.
Bulk ordering takes the low-cost process of sheet metal fabrication to the next level. It saves you even more time and money, reducing your project expenses by a lot.
4. Lower Material Costs
It’s also worth mentioning that sheet metal is less expensive than stock materials, which are thicker pieces of metal. One reason is because sheet metal is thinner and it’s much easier to fabricate the raw sheet.
Since the costs are lower for us to buy the raw material, we can afford to send you a lower quote. This saves your project a lot of money, whenever you can afford to use thinner pieces of metal.
5. Faster Production with Less Machining
Machine shop quotes are dependent on the cost of our time and our materials. We already covered that sheet metal is typically a less expensive raw material, but it also involves a lot less machining time.
Looking at a waterjet cutter, the full cutting operation can be done in less than a minute. Of course, it takes upfront time to get the material prepared, and post-fab efforts to smooth and finish each part.
Since the operation requires less machining and hands-on effort, your sheet metal fabricators will charge you less.
6. Lower Assembly Costs
Sheet metal parts can be quickly welded or fastened together, but there are additional assembly options. Since the material is so thin, you can also create a bent assembly that requires no fastening or adhesives to keep everything together.
In addition, you can use rivets since most sheet metal is thin enough to accept them.
These added assembly options are much easier, resulting in lower assembly costs and even less cost hitting your bottom line.
7. Potential for Material Recycling
Some shops even sell back the scrap material that they can’t use. This gets them a small recycling profit that they sometimes include as a cost savings for bigger projects.
Though this isn’t as common as you might think, it’s another way that sheet metal fabricators can reduce your project expenses.
8. Quick Automation with CAM
We love working with sheet metal because it can be optimized with Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM). For instance, you can take a 2D flat layout on Inventor or SolidWorks, and transform it into a file that’s ready to be sent to a plasma cutter.
Doing this cuts out a majority of the upfront time that a machinist would otherwise spend. Instead of doing the programming themselves, there’s an opportunity for your engineers to do the programming and send over the completed CAM file.
Yes, there is a learning curve when it comes to CAM and it’s not always the right option, but it’s still something to consider. If you do some of the CAM work yourself, you’ll save money on fabrication.
Conclusion
There are plenty of ways that sheet metal fabricators can reduce your project expenses. At Rapid Axis, our goal is to save you as much money as possible while delivering high-quality parts to your doorstep. We take pride in our work, and we will never overcharge you for the work we do.
Consider Rapid Axis for your next sheet metal project. Allow our experts to save you even more time and money. We are a full-service machine shop that can handle sheet metal fabrication, finishing steps, and much more. Get a free quote today to get started.
. Effective Material Usage
When we use a plasma cutter or waterjet cutter to cut out a sheet metal part, there’s a big opportunity to optimize how much material we use. With our plasma cutter, we can move the part around in software before cutting starts, to make sure we effectively use every square inch of our raw sheet metal sheets.
This translates to less waste in each project, and the ability to use sheets that were partially cut already. With lower stock material costs, your project has to pay less for every cut.
2. Streamlined Production Processes
In every project, time is money. With the right sheet metal fabricators in your corner, we can save you time and streamline the full production process. This is largely thanks to the speed and automation associated with sheet metal cutting machines.
Our streamlining means that you get parts delivered sooner, and you spend less money on the physical manufacturing.
3. Bulk Ordering
We love it when people make bulk orders with Rapid Axis — not only does it keep us busy for longer, but it allows us to further optimize the CNC cutting operation. Our plasma cutter can nest dozens of parts together tightly on a single sheet of paper.
That means that we hit the “go” button one time on our machine, and it makes tens of parts that are ready to be cleaned up and sent to you.
Bulk ordering takes the low-cost process of sheet metal fabrication to the next level. It saves you even more time and money, reducing your project expenses by a lot.
4. Lower Material Costs
It’s also worth mentioning that sheet metal is less expensive than stock materials, which are thicker pieces of metal. One reason is because sheet metal is thinner and it’s much easier to fabricate the raw sheet.
Since the costs are lower for us to buy the raw material, we can afford to send you a lower quote. This saves your project a lot of money, whenever you can afford to use thinner pieces of metal.
5. Faster Production with Less Machining
Machine shop quotes are dependent on the cost of our time and our materials. We already covered that sheet metal is typically a less expensive raw material, but it also involves a lot less machining time.
Looking at a waterjet cutter, the full cutting operation can be done in less than a minute. Of course, it takes upfront time to get the material prepared, and post-fab efforts to smooth and finish each part.
Since the operation requires less machining and hands-on effort, your sheet metal fabricators will charge you less.
6. Lower Assembly Costs
Sheet metal parts can be quickly welded or fastened together, but there are additional assembly options. Since the material is so thin, you can also create a bent assembly that requires no fastening or adhesives to keep everything together.
In addition, you can use rivets since most sheet metal is thin enough to accept them.
These added assembly options are much easier, resulting in lower assembly costs and even less cost hitting your bottom line.
7. Potential for Material Recycling
Some shops even sell back the scrap material that they can’t use. This gets them a small recycling profit that they sometimes include as a cost savings for bigger projects.
Though this isn’t as common as you might think, it’s another way that sheet metal fabricators can reduce your project expenses.
8. Quick Automation with CAM
We love working with sheet metal because it can be optimized with Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM). For instance, you can take a 2D flat layout on Inventor or SolidWorks, and transform it into a file that’s ready to be sent to a plasma cutter.
Doing this cuts out a majority of the upfront time that a machinist would otherwise spend. Instead of doing the programming themselves, there’s an opportunity for your engineers to do the programming and send over the completed CAM file.
Yes, there is a learning curve when it comes to CAM and it’s not always the right option, but it’s still something to consider. If you do some of the CAM work yourself, you’ll save money on fabrication.
Conclusion
There are plenty of ways that sheet metal fabricators can reduce your project expenses. At Rapid Axis, our goal is to save you as much money as possible while delivering high-quality parts to your doorstep. We take pride in our work, and we will never overcharge you for the work we do.
Consider Rapid Axis for your next sheet metal project. Allow our experts to save you even more time and money. We are a full-service machine shop that can handle sheet metal fabrication, finishing steps, and much more. Get a free quote today to get started.